Gun control issue may

Kandace Bender, EXAMINER POLITICAL EDITOR

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, May 3, 1995

1995-05-03 04:00:00 PDT OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA -- The fight over gun control could become a potent political weapon in helping President Clinton beat back his Republican challengers in the 1996 presidential race, analysts say.

With public sentiment for gun control at an all-time high in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, Republicans are having to tiptoe around the issue, hoping to appease the powerful, conservative right without sending the rest of America - in particular, women voters - scurrying into the Democratic camp.

"Oklahoma has made the GOP anti-gun control position untenable," Gans said. "People have a strong desire to minimize violence and protect their children. That can't be done without doing something about gun control."

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Although they deny it, there are signs front-running Republican presidential hopefuls are putting the explosive issue on the back burner.

Two months ago, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole sent a letter to the chief lobbyist for the NRA, promising "the ill-conceived gun ban . . . is one of my legislative priorities."

Dole, R-Kan., vowed to repeal the assault-weapons ban passed last fall as part of Clinton's crime bill, saying in the letter to the NRA: "Disarming law-abiding citizens only places them at the mercy of those who break the law."

A House vote on the repeal was scheduled for this month but has been postponed until after anti-terrorism legislation is considered.

Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, also has been a strong defender of the right to bear arms, but his aides now say the senator will not move quickly to fulfill his vow to repeal the assault weapons ban.

Some who oppose gun control say Gramm and Dole are not backpedaling on the issue.

"I don't see where they're backing away from it," Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the NRA, said on

"Meet the Press" Sunday. "They both pledged in their campaign that they were going to do it."

Dole and Gramm are "just showing prudence, given the inflammatory rhetoric at the moment," said John Snyder, director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. "Dole is in a leadership position; he's playing two roles. The hot issue right now on Capitol Hill is the anti-terrorist bill, and that's displaced the assault weapons repeal."

"There is only one reason Republicans are not trying to repeal the assault weapons ban: They don't have the votes," she said in a statement last week.

An NBC poll taken in March showed that 76 percent of American supported the ban on assault weapons, 19 percent saying it should be repealed.

"Even before Oklahoma, I didn't see any part of the country, including the South, where people want the assault ban repealed," said Del Ali of Political / Media Research Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based firm that polls nationwide.

Ali said he had recently conducted a poll in Montana, a hotbed of gun control opponents, where "57 percent said the assault weapons ban should not be repealed."

But even when constituents make their preferences clear, legislators have other debts that must be satisfied, said Sandy Cooney, Western director of Handgun Control Inc.

"The NRA has millions of dollars invested in candidates, and in return they want the repeal of the assault weapons ban," Cooney said. "The issue of gun control will be right at the top of the president's list."

The NRA will make its presence felt particularly in the campaign for the Republican nomination, analysts say.

"The Republicans will fight for the nomination by moving to the far right, which includes a lot of rhetoric about gun control," said Ali. "The NRA is a powerful force in the primary, and it's more likely to go for Gramm or Dole," than Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania or California Gov. Wilson.

Ironically, said Ali, Specter or Wilson are the two most likely candidates to beat Clinton because of their more moderate stands on gun control and their support for abortion rights.

Woods, of the NWPC, also looks to the November 1996 general election.

Dole and Gramm "may appeal to the most conservative element during a GOP primary, but going into the general, they're going to have to win women, too."

"Women are a majority of the voters, and while there's no monolithic women's vote on gun control, every vote count in a legislative body shows women overwhelmingly support various types of gun control. . . . Eighty percent of women in both parties voted for the assault weapons ban," Woods said.

give Clinton a boost

TERROR IN THE HEART OF AMERICA

GOP backs off

in aftermath of Oklahoma bombi&lt;

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